


(Not) Who You Are

by Zari_x_Charlie (SuperSanversShipper)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, F/F, I'm so sorry for this, Tumblr request, but not really an AU, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperSanversShipper/pseuds/Zari_x_Charlie
Summary: The first time she made the mistake, Zari had been distracted by food. That was theonlyreason she didn’t realize that the figure next to her was Charlie, not Amaya.





	(Not) Who You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to an anonymous request to my tumblr-  
> Charlie: “who was this Amaya chick to you anyway?”  
> Zari: “everything”  
> [previous zamaya where Zari was the one that had to take Amaya back to Zambesi]
> 
> This got... really angsty. Sorry...

The first time she made the mistake, Zari had been distracted by food. That was the _only_ reason she didn’t realize that the figure next to her was Charlie, not Amaya.

Her attention had been thoroughly captured by the large stack of pancakes in front of her, and she barely realised that she had asked Amaya to pass the chocolate syrup rather than Charlie.

Regardless, everyone at the table had frozen, eyes flickering between the totem-bearer and the shapeshifter. No one wanted to open the can of worms that came with Amaya’s name.

Charlie, for her part, had simply glanced at Zari, realized that the totem-bearer was talking to her, and passed the syrup, unusually silent.

Zari wasn’t sure whether or not she appreciated the silence, but she was definitely glad that Charlie hadn’t asked any probing questions.

* * * * *

Zari could feel Sara’s eyes on her again. It wasn’t a surprise. After the incident during breakfast, most of her teammates seemed to be keeping a close eye on her.

She looked up again, and the Captain went back to seemingly staring at the central console’s screen.

She sighed. How much longer was Sara going to go without asking her something?

 _”Might as well just ask first, if she’s gonna take so much time,”_ she thought.

“What is it, Sara?” she called.

The Captain looked up nonchalantly, as if she had been doing absolutely nothing, “What do you mean?”

“You were staring at me. It’s weird. Why?” Zari shot back, a little irritated at the captain’s dodging.

“It’s, uh… it’s nothing!” Sara answered, clearly unprepared for Zari’s questioning.

“Yeah, right. What is it?” the hacker rolled her eyes.

“Fine, it’s just… you and Amaya, huh?” Sara asked.

“What?” Zari startled, eyes widening as she looked at the captain, “Me? And Amaya? Like, you mean, like that? No, that’s crazy. Besides, she was with Nate. I wouldn’t get between them.”

Zari winced as her voice climbed a mountain in pitch.

“Right,” Sara answered, looking unconvinced.

* * * * *

The next time Zari had made the mistake was after a joint Time Bureau-Legend briefing, with Nate, Ava, Gary, and Mona, that had gone in depth into the Legends’ mission in Zambesi.

Zari couldn’t deny that the memory of the village brought her on edge, and after the meeting she had marched away to the kitchen to grab a snack.

The village was beautiful, with its untouched views and clear night skies, but the memories she had there marred the beauty. She doubted she’d ever be able to go back, at least not without remembering everything that had happened between them.

She was so occupied with the memories, that she ran right into two familiar figures talking to each other as they walked down the hallway.

“Oh, shit,” Zari cursed, stumbling, “Sorry, Nate. Sorry, Amaya.”

Her breath caught in her throat at the slip, and she glanced at Nate’s face, twisted into a frown that she expected was on her own face as well. He was, quite literally, the worst person to mess up in front of. Charlie, on the other hand, just raised an eyebrow. Heat raced through Zari’s face and she looked at the ground to avoid them seeing it.

“I-i, I mean Charlie. Sorry… Charlie,” she corrected, keeping her eyes on her feet as she walked away.

 _”Fuck.”_ she thought to herself.

* * * * *  
“Hey, Z, you in here?” Nate’s voice called, surprising her.

Zari started, her head nearly hitting the engine before she rolled out from underneath.

“Yeah, I’m here” she answered, sitting up on the creeper.

Nate walked in, and leaned against the engine, fiddling with his watch, “Uh… so.”

 _”Nate isn’t usually this nervous,”_ she thought to herself.

“Everything okay, Nate?” she asked, putting her wrench down.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. It’s just… I never really thanked you,” Nate said, smiling awkwardly as Zari raised an eyebrow, “you know, for… dropping Amaya back in Zambesi. It should’ve been me, but you got that I was too afraid of saying goodbye to her, and of flashing her and then her forgetting about me. So, thank you. For y’know. Doing what I couldn’t.”

Zari clenched her hand into a fist, sincerely wishing that she hadn’t dropped her wrench, so it wouldn’t have been so obvious. No-one had asked her what had happened after she’d dropped Amaya off. She was glad they didn’t, because then she would’ve had to lie, would’ve had to tell them that she _did_ memory flash Amaya, even though she didn’t. 

“I… uh,” Nate added, “I know you two were pretty close. She always called you and Sara her best friends.”

Best friends. _Right._ That’s all they were. Just best friends.

“Yeah, she was pretty much my… best friend,” Zari sighed.

Nate nodded sadly, sitting down on the step that led to the exit, leaning over to squeeze Zari’s shoulder.

* * * * *

The third time it happened was during in the field. Zari ducked behind a bench, getting back up occasionally to send bursts of air towards the chimera. Sara lay beside her, bleeding heavily from the claw marks across her side.

“Zari…” the captain groaned out, grabbing her arm.

“Sara, y- you need to keep pressure on the wound,” Zari said, shoving her arm back onto the wound.

Sara hissed in pain, before saying, “I- I’ll be fine. You need t- to take the chimera down before it hurts anyone else.”

“Right... right,” Zari answered, unused to being put in charge, “take it down. Right.”

She pressed a finger to her ear to activate her comms, “Hey, can everyone hear me?”

The affirmative responses relaxed her slightly, and she continued, “Guys, Sara’s hurt and she’s bleeding really heavily. We need to get her back to the ship, but we also need to get this stupid chimera in a cage.”

“Sara’s ‘urt?” came John’s accented voice.

“Yeah. So, Ray, you’re going to get her to the medbay, okay?” she ordered.

“You got it, Z,” Ray said.

“Okay, and Mick? Lay down some cover fire when I give the signal. Constantine, you, me, and Amay- Charlie are going to go and attack it from three different sides, okay? Remember, we’re just subduing this one,” she continued, trying to keep her voice as steady, as Sara-like, as possible, though it wavered on Charlie’s name.

The others grunted back responses.

“Okay, Ray. Come get Sara,” she said.

As the chimera paced and growled within the clearing it’d created for itself, Ray flew across to kneel next to Sara and Zari.

“I’ve got her,” he said, picking their captain up and flying away.

“Okay,” Zari said when Ray and Sara were out of sight, “On three, we charge at it and try to tranq it as soon as possible. Remember, we’re not sending this one to hell unless we have to.”

“We know, love,” Constantine said.

“Okay, so,” Zari took a breath getting ready to run at the beast.

“Three.”

It growled, seemingly staring right at Zari.

“Two.”

Zari took a deep breath.

“One.”

* * * * *

“Knock, knock,” Charlie said, sauntering into Zari’s quarters and slumping onto the bed.

“That’s not knocking,” Zari shot back, trying to concentrate on the video game in front of her.

“I know.”

Zari spared the shapeshifter a glance, to see her sporting a cheshire grin. She sighed. After her slip up during the chimera mission earlier, Charlie was the last person she wanted to deal with.

“So, what’s up?” she asked instead of voicing those thoughts.

“Why do you ask?” Charlie ducked around her question.

“Well, it’s not exactly like we hang around each other much, let alone enough to show up to each others’ rooms unannounced,” Zari answered, trying to split her focus between the game and Charlie.

“Hmm… I guess not,” Charlie said, leaning back on her elbows, “I just wanted to say you were pretty good out there. Y’know, takin’ charge and all that.”

“I guess. But if I never have to do that again, I wouldn’t mind,” Zari said, giving up on trying to focus on both and pausing the game.

“Why not?”

The question made Zari frown. Although she knew she didn’t want to be the leader, she wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Well,” she said eventually, “If I ever had to be the captain or leader or whatever, that probably means that Sara’s injured, or dead, or even just gone. That would honestly suck. Besides, I’m not exactly used to being the second-in-command. If I had to just… jump from inexperienced second-in-command to captain, I don’t think I’d be able to handle it.”

“So you weren’t always the captain’s little helper?” Charlie asked, somehow both teasing and serious.

“No,” Zari answered, “When I first got here, it was a guy named Jax. He also used to be the ship’s mechanic. Then, after he left it was Amaya…”

“Can’t say it’s the first time I heard that name,” the shapeshifter snorted.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Zari said, remembering how Amaya used to sneak into her room some nights and watch her play video games or practice violin.

“So, she was the moral compass, the glue that held the team together, _and_ the lieutenant? Geez, how’d you survive when she left?” Charlie asked, opening her beer without a bottle opener, just like Amaya used to.

Zari just shrugged. She wasn’t sure herself, how they’d managed to get through the last few months without Amaya’s guidance, her morality.

“So, she was basically the whole package to the team, huh? What was she to you?” Charlie asked, taking a sip of the drink.

“Everything,” Zari said, unthinkingly, before panicking.

“Wait, no. Not, you know, everything, everything. Just… so-” she scrambled for an alternative.

“Right,” Charlie said, gaze focused on her bottle all of a sudden, “everything. Got it.”

The shapeshifter got off the bed and marched toward the door, clutching at the bottle.

Zari stared after her, confused, as the door closed behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at me on my tumblr: @zarixcharlie


End file.
